Catholics love, hate, want, don't want, health reform.

It's hard to say. Just as congress and the general public are duking it out over the breadth, depth and cost of change in today's uneven, expensive, broken system, so there's disarray among Catholics.

Their Church has a big stake in this: The nations' 624 Catholic hospitals and 499 long term care nursing facilities comprise about 17% of the nation's hospital beds. And the Church has an unbroken record of centuries of health service to the poor.

UPDATE: ThursdayWhile I was writing this original post on Wednesday, Archbishop of Washington Donald Wuerl was speaking out on Catholic health care and making the first mention I've seen yet on concern for the immigrants who live, work, and could suffer or die without care in our midst. (Thanks to Rocco Palmo for the heads up) Wuerl told PoliticsDaily that the Gospel mandate to care for the "least of these" means...:

Universal coverage should be universal, including everyone. Health care reform cannot leave people out because of pre-existing conditions, chronic illnesses, their place of work or because they cannot afford insurance. Reform should not leave people out because of where they come from or when they arrived here.

Not all Catholics, or Christians agree. Jeff Diamant's story this week touches on the disputes among Catholics over how or whether reform will serve social justice while still upholding the Church's view on blocking abortion and euthanasia.

How much variation is there?

The American Life League, led by Judie Brown, a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life at the Vatican, is selling a $5 poster suggesting health reform be buried with its most famous Catholic champion, Ted Kennedy. And this comes even after lavish assurances of no federal funding for abortion. These are the folks outraged that Cardinal Sean O'Malley presided at Kennedy's funeral Mass.

Wmanwhile, earlier this week, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, applauded the health reform campaign to provide universal coverage, telling Catholic News Service:

The health of their own citizens belongs to the authorities, to the central government. And so I have been 16 years in the States and I was wondering why a big portion of the American people is deprived, have no health assistance at all.

After President Obama's speech last week, Kathy Saile, director of domestic social development for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, reiterated the Church's view that...

Health care reform that respects the life and dignity of all is a moral imperative and urgent national priority. We welcome the President's speech as an important contribution to this essential national debate and task."

Contrast this with an analysis blasting reform plans by Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., and Robert Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., According to Diamant, they "publicly warned that a plan could include 'excessive centralization' and 'government socialization' of medicine." The statement says, in part:

There is important work to be done, but "change" for change's sake; change which expands the reach of government beyond its competence would do more harm than good. Change which loses sight of man's transcendent dignity or the irreplaceable value of human life; change which could diminish the role of those in need as agents of their own care is not truly human progress at all.

A hasty or unprincipled change could cause us, in fact, to lose some of the significant benefits that Americans now enjoy, while creating a future tax burden which is both unjust and unsustainable.

The Naumann/Finn statement was, in turn blasted by other Catholics.

J. Peter Nixon, a Catholic writer, picked through it and found it thin on Catholic doctrine, wrong on facts about health care and overreaching in its conclusions. Nixon writes:

The implicit suggestion of the document is that Catholic social teaching is comfortable with a two-tier system in which those with traditional health insurance have access to a full range of health care services while those without such insurance would rely on some sort of "safety net." This solution sounds very much like the system we have now, with all the inequality in access and quality of care that it produces. At some point, these inequalities simply have to be seen as violating fundamental principles of justice.

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About Cathy Lynn Grossman

Cathy Lynn Grossman is too fidgety to meditate. But talking about visions and values, faith and ethics lights her up. Join in at Faith & Reason. More about Cathy.